November 29, 2012Connecticut vs. New HampshireConnecticut Head Coach Kevin Ollie

It was a tough game. New Hampshire played very, very well. They stayed with their stuff. I give a lot of credit to Billy. Billy had those guys ready to play.

We know that we’re going to get everybody’s best game, and they came out and played and performed. Our guys didn’t perform the way we wanted to perform, but we found a way to win. Going one for 14 from the three-point line, and the different things we did in the course of the game – 13 turnovers to a team that wasn’t really pressuring us – is something that we’ve got to cut down on. We definitely have to shoot better going down to MadisonSquareGarden.

At the end of the day, we did out rebound them, which is a good, positive thing. But we’ve just got to shoot better.

I’m not going to have a pity party, because that’s not who I am. We had a good win and I’m not going to apologize for it.

We didn’t make shots today. We were one for 14 (from three), but I think they were contested shots. They weren’t the clean shots that we got in the Stony Brook game off of good penetration. It was contested shots and it was forced shots. We’re just not that good to play this way and expect that we’re just going to keep winning. At the end of the day, we made enough plays.

On foul shooting

Our free throw shooting has been great. In the first half we missed six, and those were momentum killers. When we get to the free throw line we’re supposed to convert them.

It’s a game that’s over with, but we’re going to learn from it and we’re going to grow. That’s what you do in life. You don’t go through life, you grow through life. This is going to be a growing point for us, and we’re going to get better.

A win is a win. I’m happy we got the win. We played OK. We could have played better. We’ve got some improving to do.

I didn’t play great but I played better than I have been. I feel like my defense could have been better. There were a couple of lose balls I could have got to. I’m glad with the win though.

The effort was there at the beginning of the game. I felt like we let it go a little bit as the game went on in the first half. We picked it back up at times in the second half.

Connecticut vs. New HampshireNew Hampshire Head Coach Bill Herrion

Our kids gave great effort. I can’t question how hard our guys played. There were three things that we really stressed coming into this game playing these guys.

The first thing was -- and we didn’t do a great job of it in the first half -- you have to make them guard you and you have to run offense. Their best offense a lot of the time is stealing the ball, long rebounds, run-outs, and break-outs. I don’t think we made our offense efficient enough in the first half, but then we got a little bit better in the second half.

The second thing is your transition defense because their guards are so fast foul line to foul line. And you pick up the stat sheet and we did a great job on Napier.

The third thing is the glass. We’ve been outrebounded the last three games…I know that’s not a strength of theirs right now, but I thought we kind of held our own of the glass.

A team at our level, if you want to beat a team at this level, you need some guys to step up and make shots. I thought we had a lot of good looks. We just didn’t make that one or two shots you needed at the right time. I think we got fatigued. I rode our guys. I wanted to use the bench more and just couldn’t get to it because you’re in a game. It’s a four point game, five point game, six point game and you’re on the sidelines saying, “we can win this.”